


Occupational Hazards

by Dragonflies_and_Katydids



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Fluff, Homecoming, Magical Accidents, Sickfic, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2019-09-15 08:45:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16930110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonflies_and_Katydids/pseuds/Dragonflies_and_Katydids
Summary: An older prompt-fill from Tumblr, for someone who wanted sick-fic fluff. It's not exactly sick-fic, though it has some elements of that.





	Occupational Hazards

It’s been a long trip home this time, but Lace takes the stairs to the rookery two at a time, same as always, eager to put her report on Leliana’s desk and be officially on leave for a few days. As much as she loves the constant rush of seeing new places, and hates the thought of spending endless months staring at the same walls, a few days in the same bed is an enticing prospect right now.

Especially a bed she can share with someone else.

The spymaster isn’t at her desk, and Lace heaves a covert sigh of relief. Partly because Leliana is more than a little terrifying, but also because it means Lace can drop her report and barrel back down the stairs without pausing to give a summary of what she’s already written down. Not that she normally begrudges Leliana the time, not when she understands too well how many important things get left out of reports because the writer thought they “just weren’t that important,” but today, Lace has other places she’d much rather be.

* * *

 

The Undercroft is the same as it ever is, full of clanging and occasional whiffs of acrid smoke. It’s all very properly dwarven, which might be why Lace doesn’t care for it much, except that it’s the one place she’s guaranteed to find Dagna. Who's about as properly dwarven as Lace is, even if she is comfortable with some of the traditional tools.

Not that anything stays traditional long, once Dagna gets her hands on it.

She’s bent over something on the workbench when Lace comes in, her elbows propped on the table that’s still too tall for her. Lace teases her about it sometimes: she can make the Inquisitor a sword to kill demons, but she can’t knock six inches off a few table legs to give herself a comfortable place to work.

But then Dagna starts to cough, and the height of the table is no longer Lace’s primary concern. “What’s wrong?” she asks, hurrying past Harritt with barely a nod.

Dagna waves as if nothing’s wrong, but since she also doesn’t stop coughing, it’s not very reassuring, and when Lace gets close enough, she can hear Dagna wheeze on each inhale.

“I’m fine,” Dagna manages, then immediately begins coughing again.

“No, you’re not,” Lace says.

Dagna’s laugh turns into another cough, but eventually she gets it under control. “I’m fine,” she says again. Rough as her voice is, she’s beaming at Lace with her usual cheer. “It’s nothing, just a cough.”

“Are you sick?” Lace asks. “Why haven’t you seen the healers?”

“It’s just a cough,” Dagna says. “There was an accident, a couple days ago, and it made a lot of smoke, that’s all.”

“An accident?” Lace asks, alarmed. Dagna’s accidents tend to be more exciting than most people’s, but at least Skyhold is still standing.

“A bloody disaster,” Harritt puts in, sounding pleased, the way people do when their bad predictions come true. Lace ignores him.

“What kind of accident?”

“I just did a calculation wrong,” Dagna says, shrugging the whole thing off as if a cough that lasts for days is nothing. “A little smoke isn’t so bad. It’s not like we don’t have plenty of that already, right?”

“But why are you still coughing?” Lace demands. “Couldn’t the healers do something?”

For the first time, Dagna looks embarrassed. “Ahhhh…no, actually.”

“No?” Lace repeats stupidly.

“I was, ummmm, working on something for the Inquisitor.” She usually is, so Lace just waits, eyebrows almost to her hairline. “I was thinking, if I can make a rune that does damage, then why can’t I invert that and make a rune that heals instead. It makes sense, right?”

Only Dagna would take a magic they barely understand and try to experiment with it. It’s hair-raising, and yet, Lace rides out into the wilderness, often alone and into the heart of the most dangerous territory the Inquisition can find. She might not have quite the same reaction to danger that most sane people have.

“So it didn’t work?” Lace guesses, trying not to smile.

“No,” Dagna says glumly. “And worse, the healers say there’s nothing they can do about the cough. Something about the way the magic exploded, it’s interfering with their spells.”

_“What?”_  Suddenly, the whole thing is no longer amusing. No healing magic is a terrifying prospect for anyone, but for someone who tinkers with the kinds of artifacts Dagna considers toys? Lace can feel her own palms starting to sweat.

“Not forever,” Dagna hastens to say. “Just…for a while.”

“How long?”

“A couple weeks, maybe?” She shrugs again, looking remarkably unconcerned. “It’s already starting to fade-”

The rest of the sentence is cut off by another coughing fit, this time hard enough to double her over. Unsure what else to do, Lace pats her gingerly on the back until the coughing subsides again.

Dagna stays bent over for a while, breathing shallowly, and Lace watches her, concerned. “They can’t do  _anything_?” she asks.

“Oh, well, they said there were things I could do besides magic,” Dagna says dismissively. “Just…lying down, mainly. Which is boring, and it’s not like it helps, anyway. Next week, or the week after, they’ll be able to heal me, and it’ll all be fine.”

She straightens up carefully, as if anticipating another coughing fit, but when none appears, she turns back to the table and picks up one of the many tools spread out there. Lace has no idea what any of them are for, just that all of them look like something Dagna created herself.

“So the cough won’t go away on its own?” Lace asks.

“They said it might,” Dagna says. “But even if it doesn’t, it’s fine. Just a couple weeks, right?”

Lace stares at her, finally getting a view of the entire landscape. “If you rest, is it more likely to go away?”

“That’s what they said.” Dagna's tone is deeply skeptical, an effect that’s ruined when she immediately begins coughing again. “But it’s so  _boring_ , lying down all the time.”

“And if you don’t rest, does it get worse?”

No answer this time, and Lace steps sideways around the table to get a better look at Dagna’s expression. Guilty. Definitely guilty.

“Lace-”

Lace doesn’t let her finish. “No. No, no, and no. You are  _not_  going to keep working when the healers told you to rest!”

“But I think I’ve almost got it!”

“Then you can get it later,” Lace says. “Put down that…that…that whatever that is.” Momentarily distracted, she squints at the thing in Dagna’s hands, which looks a bit like a thin reed pen, but made of metal. “What is that, anyway?”

Dagna brightens and waves it in Lace’s direction. “Isn’t it neat? I was going through so many pens, the tips just kept wearing down, and they would always need to be re-cut right when I was having my best ideas, so I thought, maybe I could make one out of metal.”

And away she goes, listing out all the metals she tried, and in what order, and what the results of each test were, and which ones worked best on vellum as opposed to paper, and which ones might be used to scratch letters into wood, and…

Lace considers interrupting her–-the frequent coughing fits provide ample opportunity–--but instead, she just slips the pen from Dagna’s fingers and begins walking them slowly toward the door from the Undercroft. From prior experience, she knows that so long as she continues to make attentive noises, Dagna will continue to talk until she runs out of voice. Only about a quarter of it will make sense to Lace, but that’s all right. Dagna always looks so happy to have a willing audience that Lace is happy to let her talk.

If the conversation also provides a distraction while she walks Dagna back to her room and her bed, well…then they both get what they want, and that’s never a bad thing.

**Author's Note:**

> [on Tumblr](https://dragonflies-and-katydids.tumblr.com/post/139518839697/xhermionedanger-dragonflies-and-katydids)


End file.
